Word: queerly
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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London's Morning Post comments on the large number of new words of "America's queer coinage (which so often proves ancient currency disinterred)." E. g.- "Racket-a trick, dodge, scheme, game, line of business or action. 1812." "Skirt-A woman. Now vulgar slang, 1560.'' Unlike Sam Johnson, who occasionally winked (as when he defined "lexicographer" as "a harmless drudge") and who occasionally nodded into Latinic somnolence ("Network-anything reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections"), editors of the S. O. E. D. are always serious but try hard...
Night before he had bumped into an old acquaintance, also named Smith, had spent a queer evening with him. Smith II, though rich beyond avarice's dreams, though magnetic to women, was also, it appeared, contemplating suicide. Smith I was too intent on his own plans to pay much attention to him. Next morning he methodically carried them out; but just when he was about to take the fatal step a storm struck, and instinctively he tried to save the boat. By the time he had succeeded he was too exhausted to kill himself that day. Furthermore, he stumbled...
Within the coupe the driver steps on his gas throttle; the propeller whirls noisily and the queer craft scoots along the road. ... At the airport the driver fetches a monoplane wing, bolts it into place just abaft the cabin door. A fuselage tail, with control surfaces, is hooked onto the coupe's bustle-like stern (see cut). The driver (now a pilot) steps on the same gas throttle as before, steers with the same steering wheel, prods the same foot-brake, kites down the runway, climbs...
...spinning like a teetotum in his grave. Viking Press issued the kind of book that was like a call of boots & saddles to the old vice crusader. Erskine Caldwell is a newcomer to the Viking list, a young author of the leftwing, hard-boiled school of U. S. fiction. Queer mixtures of Rabelaisian spade-calling, bell laughter and poetic proletarianism, God's Little Acre luridly illustrates two present-day intelligentsiac trends: towards unashamed sensuality, against capitalistic industry. It also underlines a recent tendency of U. S. publishers: to go as near the limits of censorship as possible...
...great deal of weird-sounding thrumming and drum-spanking. The curtain went up on Shankar's eight brightly-turbaned musicians, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the stage, 56 different instruments within reach. Drums shaped like picturesque vases, stringed instruments with necks almost as fat as their queer little bodies, gongs as bright as gold-pieces and serpentine horns made the music for Shankar to dance to. It was delicate, highly refined music for the most part which, with its single thread of melody, might have sounded monotonous to Occidental ears but for the drummers tapping and slapping...